Cameron was in Las Vegas speaking on a hodgepodge panel at the 2010 Wireless Convention (Twitter's Biz Stone and the White House's tech guy Aneesh Chopra also appeared at the talk).

Cameron thought the film’s 3D technology would keep pirates at bay. But according to TorrentFreak.com, which tracks BitTorrent usage, Avatar was downloaded 500,000 times in its first two days in theaters and almost 1 million times, a record, during the first full week.

9:55 On threats to media businesses: Cameron says only bandwidth has been holding back the problems that hit the music business from hurting the movie business. He says his approach was reinvigorate the cinema experience with 3D, Imax and all those things. Avatar is most pirated film in history, as well as having the highest box office. People are distinguishing between two experiences, and having both. Some entertainment you want to be portable, and some you don't.

10:01 Cameron says, with a smile, imagine how much we would have made if we weren’t the most pirated film.

10:01 Cameron says Avatar will be on iTunes in May. He notes that there has been a lot of discussion on when to release the DVD; they are actually going to bring it out on DVD next month while it is still in theaters. He says they can co-exist in the same entertainment ecosystem.

In a post-panel interview with CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Cameron says he is working on getting 3-D content on smart phones -- no 3-D glasses needed.